Johann Andreas Kraut

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This article or section needs to be revised. Details should be given on the talk page. Please help to improve it , and then remove this flag.

Johann Andreas Kraut (born July 11, 1661 in Giebichenstein near Halle (Saale) ; † June 24, 1723 in Berlin ; also Krautt , from 1703 from Kraut ) was an entrepreneur in Brandenburg-Prussia . He was also a banker , secret war council and minister in Prussia.

Life

Johann Andreas Kraut

His parents were Andreas Kraut (1615–1661) and his wife Anna Maria Bünger (1622–73). His father was a pan . He came to Berlin around 1680 from his place of birth, Giebichenstein near Halle. Kraut acquired its first capital in the Berlin trading house Westorf & Schilling , which supplied the Berlin court. There he learned a lot for his future work. In 1686, Kraut became the third partner in this company.

In 1686 he founded the Berlin Gold and Silver Manufactory, the first significant and permanent Berlin manufacturing company. From 1686 he became familiar with the cash management of the entire army administration. Banker and civil servant in one, he procured loans for the state in Amsterdam, London, Venice, Genoa and Vienna, for which he received subsidies from the state . He made a fortune on these deals. Besides, the state became its debtor. He did not achieve this through embezzlement, but legally, in the form of interest and agio . Thus he was one of the first war profiteers in Brandenburg-Prussia.

Many other influential government posts followed. In 1689 he became war commissioner . Kraut's success can be attributed, among other things, to the fact that he invested his wealth in his ventures and did not use it for his private consumption. In 1691 he sold his gold and silver manufacture to the brothers Caspar and Georg Bose in Leipzig, who owned a similar manufacture there, but left considerable capital in the company. In 1693 he bought a house in the street An der Lange Brücke in the Holy Spirit quarter (later Königstrasse 60, today on the Marx-Engels-Forum on Rathausstrasse opposite the Nikolaiviertel ), which he lived in until his death. In 1703 he was raised to the nobility and was given the addition of "von". In 1713, Kraut became a member of the General Disability Fund and the General Finance Directorate.

The "Warehouse House" founded by Kraut in Berlin, around 1750

In the same year he invested capital and expertise in the Royal Warehouse in Berlin founded in 1713 . Kraut brought in a share capital of 100,000 Reichstaler . He then left the management of the warehouse to his brother-in-law Severin Schindler .

Soon after the company was founded dispute broke out between cabbage and King Frederick William I of. It was about the ordinance issued by the king that the warehouse had to buy up all Kurbrandenburg wool and have it processed in the company itself. Kraut himself shied away from this additional burden, as he feared that he could no longer sell the increased production.

In what was then Stralauer Vorstadt (today Berlin-Friedrichshain ) he built his summer residence and the Krauts-Gasse, which is now called Krautstrasse.

In 1718 he was president of the highest domain administration authority.

In 1723 Kraut died a rich man. Immediately after his death, Friedrich Wilhelm I confiscated his cash. The well-deserved man was treated like a criminal in retrospect. The frightened heirs, who trembled about the family honor, were quickly ready to cede Kraut's shares in the company and an additional 40,000 thalers to the Great Military Orphanage in Potsdam when the king threatened to symbolically hang the corpse for allegedly secret wool exports - for wool exports from Prussia stood the death penalty.

He is buried in the crypt chapel under the northern tower of the Nikolaikirche in Berlin. His grave monument was erected by Johann Georg Glume in 1725; the family chapel has been preserved.

family

He married Anna Ursula Schindler, a businessman's daughter, in Berlin in 1685. The couple had only one son, the royal Prussian major Friedrich Andreas von Kraut (1696-1716). Hence his brother's descendants inherited.

His descendant Luise Charlotte Henriette von Kraut (1726–1819) acquired Hoppenrade Castle from his remaining "herb inheritance" ; Theodor Fontane described this in detail.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Helga Schultz: Berlin 1650-1800 - Social history of a residence. Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1987, p. 76
  2. ↑ Erika Herzfeld: Prussian Manufactories . 1st edition. Verlag der Nation, Berlin 1994, p. 51
  3. ↑ Erika Herzfeld: Prussian Manufactories . 1st edition. Verlag der Nation, Berlin 1994, p. 52
  4. ↑ At the long bridge in the Holy Spirit quarter . In: Street name lexicon of the Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein
  5. ↑ Erika Herzfeld: Prussian Manufactories . 1st edition. Verlag der Nation, Berlin 1994, p. 78
  6. ↑ Erika Herzfeld: Prussian Manufactories . 1st edition. Verlag der Nation, Berlin 1994, p. 68
  7. ↑ Erika Herzfeld: Prussian Manufactories , 1st edition 1994 Berlin, Verlag der Nation, page 82
  8. ↑ Krauts-Gasse . In: Street name lexicon of the Luisenstädtischer Bildungsverein
  9. ↑ a b Ingrid Mittenzwei, Erika Herzfeld: Brandenburg-Prussia 1648–1789 . 1st edition. Verlag der Nation, Berlin 1987, p. 224
  10. ^ Theodor Fontane : Walks through the Mark Brandenburg , Volume 5 ( Five Castles ): "Hoppenrade"
personal data
SURNAME Kraut, Johann Andreas
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Krautt, Johann Andreas; Kraut, Johann Andreas von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German entrepreneur
DATE OF BIRTH July 11, 1661
PLACE OF BIRTH Giebichenstein near Halle (Saale)
DATE OF DEATH June 24, 1723
Place of death Berlin